Conclusion: HP's new digital-media-oriented Pavilion Elite m9040n is fast, loaded with features, and its new looks and newly integrated receivers improve its profile. Our main issue is the redundant bays for two of HP's proprietary external hard drives. If you can get past that, there's a solid desktop here.
Conclusion: At some point, you'll find that your old desktop PC is just too damn slow to handle multimedia tasks effectively. (Hint: When you're resizing pictures, ripping MP3s, or transcoding videos from you camcorder for uploading to YouTube, you'll become much better acquainted with that dreaded hourglass than you'd ever hoped to be.) If you've already...